Saving Mr Banks – DVD review

By Chloë Ashby

A spoonful of sugar helps John Lee Hancock’s account of the making of Mary Poppins go down

John Lee Hancock, 2013

Buena Vista

A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down, as Saving Mr Banks goes to show. John Lee Hancock’s film is a sweetly sentimental account of the making of Mary Poppins. Emma Thompson portrays a prickly PL Travers as she primly resists Walt Disney’s adaption of her most beloved creation.

An affectionate but unrelenting Disney (Tom Hanks) persists, and the pressure applied – here comes the medicine – causes her to revisit bitter memories of a traumatic childhood and an alcoholic father (Colin Farrell). Insightful and loveable in equal measure.

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